


His Pleasant Fruits

by okapi



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, POV Sherlock Holmes, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Public Sex, Retirement, Sherlock Holmes's Retirement, Sussex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 08:48:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13543848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.(Song of Solomon 4:16)ACD Holmes/Watson. Retirement!lock. PWP. Sex in the Sussex cottage garden.





	His Pleasant Fruits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Savorybreakfasts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savorybreakfasts/gifts).



Poor Adam, thought I, as the ground rose swiftly to greet me.

It was so easy to be tempted,

distracted, beguiled,

so easy to fall

in a lovely garden.

The moment of empathy passed, and much like the first gardener of Eden, my instincts for self-preservation were strong. Upon my shoulder striking the slope of the rose bed, I rolled until I was flat onto my back, in the centre of the stone path that ran between the ordered world of the roses and the more chaotic sphere that its ever-romantic sovereign dubbed ‘my wild, woolly wonderland.’

The lord of both was absent, electing this radiant, redolent Sunday to commune with his own Lord in a village pew. I had not accompanied him. From our arrival in this sleepy corner of the world, I had declared myself a recalcitrant atheist, and, thus, had been observing the Sabbath as I did most days, weather permitting, worshipping amongst the shrines of my skeps, as hard at work as my fellow congregants.

Spare me the hymn-book and the hymn, say I, there is no sweeter, more delightful prayer for the uncommon than honey.

This Sunday, finding myself baked and blistered by a full morning in August’s unremitting firebox, I had decided that a pause was in order, and, as was my custom, was about to ready a mid-day tea for Watson’s homecoming.

It was difficult to anticipate the state of my beloved’s spirit when he returned from these seventh-day sojourns. Sometimes he arrived whistling, rosy-cheeked and bursting with gossip; we ate and then he aided me in whatever tasks awaited my attention, chatting all the while. At times, when the banality, or perhaps a virtue more tiresome, of village life weighed upon him, conversation was reduced to a few grunts; he made short work of a bit of bread and cheese, then retired to his bulbs and beds, to labour in silence until dusk. Once, I later learned that a visiting, and, according to some, scandalously ‘high church’ clergyman had been in the pulpit, he was in a different mood altogether, for he swept me off my feet, planted me a bed where no flower but love blossomed, and ploughed, with a vigour as delicious as mead, until field and sower, queen and drone, were thrice sated and sodden with sweat.

It was a case of ‘wait and see.’ Every attempt to assemble an equation with any predictive value had met with abject failure, and the whole enterprise eventually and reluctantly abandoned.

That morning, however, I had been beset by a fancy of our small blue-china bowl hosting a couple of his garden’s beauties on the table and had decided that, regardless of the weather of the Watson, a bit of colour and fragrance ‘mist the tea and cakes would not go amiss.

And so, into the garden I went.

I had two near-perfect specimens of pink damask rose, ‘Comte de Chambord,’ in hand when temptation reared its head, not in the ‘subtil’ manner of Eden’s serpent, no, but in the bold, unapologetic, deep crimson ruffles of an unkempt ‘Mme. Isaac Pereire’ at the far edge of the bed. It hung low, as if hiding its large head and heady aroma, but I spotted it, or rather sniffed it out, sleuthhound that I am, was, and ever shall be. At once, I knew it to be the perfect addition to my pair of pinks.

And so, scissors in hand, I bounded.

And it was then that Adam’s second misstep, the beguiling distraction, presented itself. Something, and I daresay in that moment I knew no more than it was a ‘something,’ caught my eye. My hands, my body continued about the business of claiming of the rose, but my mind was already hopping like a curious rabbit into the flower beds on the far side of the walk.

Beneath the asters and the zinnias and the geums and the nasturtiums, beneath the colours, the reds and pinks, the purples and mauves, was a something, two somethings, resting on a thin slab of tree stump.

And those somethings resembled a tiny chair, and, perhaps, a tiny wishing well. They gave the appearance, and here I cast my mind back to childhood and the secret hobby of a favourite aunt, of having been fashioned by, or perhaps for, fairies.

Fairies!

Impossible sparred with highly improbable, and the loser was my equilibrium.

Like Adam, I was at the mercy of a force greater than myself.

And like Adam, I fell.

I was, however, more fortuitous in my landing, for where I lay was closer to the objects of my curiosity and, as I soon learned, I was in a far better position to appraise them.

Once I determined by a series of minute twitches that I was unharmed by my voyage to ground, I abandoned interest in my own body and looked for the fairy somethings. I was relieved to discover that they still existed, and, thus, were not products of a late summer’s reverie or, worse, heat’s delirium.

Yes, one was a chair, made of twigs and bark and upholstered with moss, and yes, the other was a wishing well, also made of twigs and bark and adorned with seedpods, tendrils of vines, and daintily dried shoots and flowers. Neither creation would be visible to upright traverser of the walk, shaded as they were by leaves and stems and blooms vying for sun.

Fairies!

In the garden!

I studied them, then turned my head to gaze into the blue sky and wispy clouds and contemplate more earthly origins.

They were not old. They’d certainly not been inherited from the cottage’s previous owners three years ago. Gifts from a child? They exuded an innocent’s whimsy but were, a second glance confirmed, quite adroitly crafted, suggesting a steadier, patient, more seasoned hand.

Watson, then.

My Watson, a carpenter for fairies!

And there, with buzz and croon and fragrance of garden all about me, with summer rays beating down, with a blanket of stone beneath my head and a sweat-soaked shirt clinging to my form; there, with a single stem of a deep red rose, aptly named Falstaff, looming and chuckling, chuckling and looming over me, I uttered a statement has been recorded only once for posterity, but spoken, thought, proven countless times until it is an engraved part of my anatomy.

“I never get your limits, Watson.”

A bee danced above me, wiggling, waggling, no doubt, telegraphing news of to her kin of the treasures, such as sage, thyme, and marjoram that my beloved had sown expressly for their benefit. Or perhaps she was heralding the state of the fields of clover that stretched beyond the old wall.

I watched her keenly until I heard a solo noise rise above, cut through, nature’s lush symphony.

A gasp.

“Dear God. Holmes!”

“NO CAUSE FOR ALARM, MY DEAR MAN! I AM NOT DEAD!”

A casual observer, were there ever one wandering about our remote parcel, might have been surprised at the cry and its vehemence, but anyone familiar with the history of Watson and myself will perhaps understand the need for vociferous reassurance on both points.

The hurried footfall told me that such reassurance was not having its desired effect, and so, with all the grace of an overturned tortoise, I made to right myself.

“Don’t move, Holmes! I’ve my bag!”

And there he was, my beloved, keeper of my heart, and at the moment, taker of my pulse and breath pattern, eclipsing the Falstaff rose, leaning over me, his face dark with concern, the sun shining brightly behind him, bestowing the fitting corona of a Renaissance deity.

Still recumbent, I dutifully submitted to a barrage of questions and checks, of extremities and pupils and mental faculties, and when the good doctor was almost satisfied as to my well-being, I hurled a question of my own.

“Watson, are those yours?” I turned my head and nodded towards the chair and well.

“I wondered when you would stumble upon them, but I had no idea the discovery would take so literal an interpretation.”

“But why?”

“Whim.” He shrugged. “[That story about your aunt ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13096965/chapters/30222243)put it in my head.”

“Yes!” I cried in a tone I hoped was encouraging. And Watson, being Watson, obliged.

“And, once in a while, it makes for a nice change of pace from the garden. Something small and delicate and wholly fantastical.”

“But when do you work on them? I’ve not seen you!”

He smirked. “When else? When you’re about your bees!”

The reproof was mild and gentle. I persisted. “But why haven’t you said anything?”

He looked away. “You don’t think a precipitous step toward dotage?”

It was my turn to reprove. I clasped his hand in both of mine. “Watson, am I really so harsh as that?”

He looked back and smiled a half-smile. “I have an idea for a fairy pirate boat-bed,” he confessed.

Can one expire from a sudden exposure to charm? My continued existence past that very moment suggests not, but at the time, the danger seemed quite real.

“Say the word, my dear man, and any materials that you require are yours. I shall order my little worker gangs to fashion you a wee comb of a mizzenmast!”

He laughed, and I can say with all certainty, for both the summer sun and my Watson’s smile were sharing my field of vision, that of the two, the latter is far, far warmer.

“You are not hurt, Holmes?” he asked, a Parthian shot of concern before the man of medicine was subsumed by other roles.

I considered. “Well, I do have a thorn in my side.”

“I thought that was my job,” he replied as I twisted that he might retrieve one of the pink damask roses, the one that broke my fall.

And even after so many years, and so much sharing and suffering, my beloved’s careful touch still provokes a quiver of warm and welcome gooseflesh.

And I was, as ever, once provoked, thence incorrigible.

“No pain,” I murmured, allowing my voice to join the onomatopoeic chorus of our surroundings, “but a bit of an _ache_.”

To watch his features melt was more than lovely, it was a sinful indulgence about which someone ought to write a sermon condemning.

“You are incorrigible, Holmes,” he teased.

I hummed. We’d begun the day tucked in our warm cottage bed, with his prick tucked just as snugly inside me, his slicked hand tugging me to release and his respiration taking the form of noisy groaning inhales followed sordid endearments exhaled onto the nape of my neck. Then, after a most savory breakfast, but before Watson donned his Sunday best, we’d made use of a certain corner of our humble residence that seemed architected and engineered for the sole purpose of mutual, manual satisfaction.

“And quite short of breath,” I added, coquettishly.

“Kiss of Life, then.”

“If you must.”

He kissed me. And kissed me. And kept on kissing me, his mouth undulating atop mine in much the same way his body had at dawn. So wet and warm and demanding. Demanding entrance, demanding rights of pillage and plunder, demanding surrender.

Oh, God, I wanted him so. And love him more. And gave him everything his lusty maw desired.

His hand cupped the front of my trousers, and that which had been slowly stirring leapt in eager greeting. He rubbed me to hardness, not halting once in his ruthless assault on my mouth.

He broke the kiss only to cast a glance at his battered old Gladstone, and I did not attempt to stifle a whimper when I noted the dismissive twitch of his brow.

Only someone planning to take you in his mouth, and his mouth alone, would have no need for unguents and slicks.

“Oh, Watson.”

Let the roses creep, thought I, their murderous stem-tresses reach and uncurl like bladed tentacles baring short, sharp teeth! Let their many pricks leave me bleeding, for my one was being freed from its confines, enveloped in a warm, wet heat, and suckled with a skill that age had not withered nor custom staled its infinite variety.

In the garden.

On a summer’s day.

There was no cause for alarm, and I was not dead, but I knew that should I die at that very moment, well, I’d die a contented man.

This was paradise, yes, the paradise of being ministered to by a creature with the heart of an angel and the fellatio technique of Lucifer’s favourite concubine as birds and bees and butterflies crisscrossed overhead, as a heavy Falstaff bowed into view and exhaled his sweet perfume.

Wooing of prickhead. Adoration of shaft.

Brushes of air. Kisses of sunlight.

Then the obligatory nuzzling of base and licking of wiry hair as my lover’s nature is both feral and filth-seeking, in stark contrast to my own tendency toward catlike cleanness.

Watson groaned like a man about to feast for I was laid out for him like a banquet, with the morning’s labour ripe for the licking on my skin.

Stone picnic.

But, in the end, he showed admirable restraint, pausing only twice in his prick-sucking to bury his whole face under my arm and then in the crook of my neck.

I came to crisis just as a round yellow-and-black forager was bidding ‘good day’ to Falstaff. Watson drank me down like nectar.

“What will the fairies think?” I slurred when I was pleasantly spent and horribly muddled.

“Any fairies of ours will be quite naughty ones, so I expect, they’ll gasp a collective ‘finally’ and host a debauched midnight masquerade in celebration.”

“Such a wicked, wicked, wonderful man,” I sighed as Watson fussed about my trousers then slipped his hands under my head and torso.

“Please,” I whispered into his ear as he raised me to sitting. “Let me. In the garden. Please, Watson.”

My anxiety vanished at his grunt of assent.

“But not here. Not when there’s a spot for it,” he said.

“What?!” I breathed, suddenly sobering.

“We’ve a frigging nook inside, why not outside?”

Why not, indeed?

“But where?” I asked, looking blankly about.

“There,” he pointed, “just before the old wall. The bench I’ve planned is not finished, but there’s a soft grassy indentation where one might comfortably recline while the other kneeled at a straddle. I will have to embrace nature quite literally in the form of tree trunk, but the angle’s just right for, well…” He coughed in a manner both sweet and horribly hypocritical given what we’d just been about. “Much easier on the joints, too, than this. I was waiting for the hedges to grow an inch or two taller—”

“No waiting! Let’s christen it at once!”

To lie back beneath summer’s canopy and be fed my Watson’s prick, to grip his lovely buttocks and hold him to me, while he fucked…

…fucked…

…fucked…

…my mouth…

“—but I suppose the trees and the flowers will provide enough screen.”

Watson’s voice brought me back out of my daydream, back to myself.

“Up, Holmes.”

It was an order. I complied.

“How long have you been planning this secret garden? As long as the fairy carpentry?” I asked as I got to my feet.

“Oh, no. Much longer.”

I looked at his broad, honest face. My mind reeled, my heart sang. “Wherever do you get such marvelous ideas, Watson?”

“During service, naturally.”

“If that is the result then perhaps I should consider joining you one Sunday.”  

“If you wore your cream-coloured suit, there wouldn’t be a dog-cart in the county fast enough to carry us home,” he replied with a wicked, wicked, wonderful gleam in his eyes.

My face became too warm. My knees threatened to buckle. A strong arm wrapped ‘round my waist, and we stood together, some of my weight now his, for a lazy eternity.

I was still leaning on him when he bent low and, with a quick snip, divorced the perfect red rose from its home.

“Is this what you were after?” he asked.

I hummed.

“On to Eden,” I bid, and taking my hand in his, he led me gently down the path.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Disclaimer: I know nothing of gardening, plants, or horticulture. 
> 
> I used Virginia Woolf’s home Monk’s House as described, mapped, and photographed in _Virginia Woolf’s Garden_ (Zoob, 2013) as my guide and the flowers and colours mentioned are ones mentioned in her letters as quoted in that book. I also used _Beautiful Roses_ (Loaëc, 2002) for the names of fragrant old roses and _Fairy House_ (Schramer 2015) for Watson’s hobby. Also, I used Vivaldi's Summer (from his Four Seasons) as inspiration music.


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